


the price we pay

by sparkycap



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, POV Lydia Martin, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24399499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkycap/pseuds/sparkycap
Summary: "There's bound to be some residual effects, but you're a strong girl. Personally,  I think that you're going to pull through with a minimal amount of post-traumatic stress. Or maybe a few years of profoundly disturbing nightmares."No one seems to care that Peter is alive and running free again. It looks like Lydia is going to have to be the one to do something about it -- which strikes her as unfair, since she's the one who had to deal with resurrecting him in the first place.In which Lydia demands closure, puts Peter Hale on a leash, and learns about her new powers. She still has to deal with the nightmares, but it turns out those aren't nearly as disturbing as the sex dreams.
Relationships: Derek Hale & Lydia Martin, Derek Hale & Peter Hale, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Lydia Martin
Comments: 13
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the summer between seasons 2 and 3. This will stay pretty much canon compliant in terms of like... actual plot events? But I play around with character development and relationships. You know, for fun. Oh, and here we actually deal with our trauma, though I don't promise healthy coping mechanisms. The most notable divergence from canon in this chapter is that Derek doesn't blame Lydia for being mind-controlled by Peter because, uh, that's dumb.
> 
> Anyway this whole thing is mostly written, but I didn't plot any of it out first, so I still have literally no idea what the story's actually about. Next chapter will be out once I edit it into something vaguely coherent!

The day after Jackson leaves for London, Lydia sits herself down in Stiles’s desk chair while he sleeps and doesn’t feel at all guilty for it.

For one thing, it’s not breaking and entering if the sheriff himself had let her in on his way to work. For another, her so-called friends had so recently ignored her for weeks—she’s not asking for help anymore, she’s demanding it. Stiles can make all the claims he’d like about worshipping her, and she fully expects that waking up to her in his bedroom will fulfill any number of adolescent fantasies, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’d left her crying in her car without bothering to explain himself afterward, or that he’d seen something was wrong with her and decided to take her ice skating instead of telling her the truth about what happened to her.

So when Stiles snuffles awake and catches sight of her, stares for a full thirty seconds, and then yelps and flails himself out of bed and onto the floor, Lydia allows herself to smile. She crosses one leg over the other, smooths down her skirt, leans forward to pin him in place with her eyes. “Good morning, Stiles. You’re going to tell me everything you know about Derek Hale.”

“Derek? What—why do you want to know about Derek? Is this going to be some kind of crazy revenge scheme? Because he, you know, stabbed Jackson with his werewolf claws? Because you have to admit, it wasn’t entirely unwarranted, and Jackson’s alive, so—I just feel compelled to point out that the last time someone went on a crazy revenge scheme in Beacon Hills, you sort of ended up almost bleeding out for it, so. Um.” Stiles is still on the floor, holding his blanket to his chest like a scandalized girl. The bruising on his face is almost gone.

Lydia makes her smile sweeter. “Stiles? You’re going to stop calling me crazy. I don’t want to hear that word out of your mouth again while I’m here, do we understand each other?”

To his credit, Stiles ducks his head, shame-faced, and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, not cool, got it. So—Lydia? Can I get dressed first?”

“No,” she says simply. “I want to know about Derek Hale because he’s the Alpha. I need to speak to the man in charge, and I’m not going in blind, so spill.”

“Yeah, see, talking to Derek isn’t really… he doesn’t really do _talking_.” Stiles pushes himself up to sit cross-legged on the floor, leaning his shoulder against his bed. He grimaces, waving his hands as if she’s supposed to glean some additional meaning from the spastic movements of his fingers. “Whenever we try to get anything out of him, he mostly just stares at us like we’re idiots.”

Lydia tilts her head as if to say _well, aren’t you?_ Stiles makes a face at her like he understands exactly what she hadn’t said and isn’t offended by it, and that’s what makes her think maybe they will be real friends one day, once he stops idealizing her existence. She sighs. “Let’s skip the part where you act like I can’t handle myself, hm? I’m going to talk to him whether you think it’s a good idea or not, and trust me, I’ll _make_ him listen.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Stiles protests. “I wasn’t trying—look, I just—I was _telling_ you about him, like you asked. He’s kind of a bitch.”

Lydia laughs unexpectedly. “So am I. So are _you_. I want the dirt, Stilinski.”

Stiles goes quiet. He swirls his fingers in the carpet on either side of his lap, worrying at his mouth. He flicks a quick look up at her. “Well, you know about the fire?”

“Everyone knows about the fire.”

Stiles shrugs. “So, he survived. Him, his sister, and his uncle—Peter.”

“I know about Peter,” Lydia says sharply. “You don’t need to tell me about Peter.”

“Right. So, you know—Peter killed Laura to become Alpha, and then Derek killed Peter, so Derek is Alpha now, and he bit Isaac and Erica and Boyd because he needed a pack, and Scott doesn’t want a pack because for some reason he thinks it’ll mess up his chances with Allison, and I don’t know why Derek was like hey, this one stupid teenager won’t be my beta, so I guess I’ll bite three other stupid teenagers, that’s a solid plan, but he did.” Stiles draws in a deep breath like he’s going to launch into more, but then he slumps. “Honestly? That’s pretty much all I know. He’s a grumpy bitch with a tragic backstory, he’s not overly forthcoming.”

“Is he dangerous?” Lydia asks.

Stiles stares at her. He curls his fingers as if they’re claws and swipes through the air. “He—Lydia. Werewolf. He’s got—Lydia?”

She rolls her eyes. “Scott’s a werewolf, and he’s about as dangerous as a golden retriever.”

“That’s because you haven’t tried to keep him away from Allison on a full moon,” Stiles muttered.

“Clearly there are varying degrees of predatory in the werewolf population.” Lydia loses the thread for a moment, between one blink and the next—instead of seeing Stiles’s bedroom, she sees the empty lacrosse field and the bright stadium lights, and it smells like dirt and blood instead of teenage boy and Febreze. She breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth, the way she’s been practicing. She opens her eyes to see Stiles watching her, those unfairly pretty eyes dark and serious. She steers them back on track. “So, come on. Where does Derek fall on the murder scale?”

“I think… low,” Stiles says slowly. “Like, there was that time he was ready to have Erica and Isaac whack you at school because he thought you were the kanima. And then, you know, there was Jackson. But that was all for, like, the good of the town and all. Very vigilante justice. I don’t think he’s a just-for-funsies kind of killer.”

“Okay. What about the kind that will rip my throat out for threatening his uncle?” Lydia asks.

Stiles’s eyes go wide. “Um. No, that—bad idea. That’s a bad idea. Derek already ripped _his_ throat out, remember? It didn’t stick. What I’m saying is—Derek will not rip your throat out for that, but Peter might. Please don’t threaten the scary undead werewolf, Lydia.”

_Peter won’t hurt me,_ Lydia thinks, but she knows better than to say it aloud. Her hand drifts entirely of its own accord to the scarring on her waist. It’s not as if she isn’t fully aware what he is; the trouble is, she might be _too_ aware. She worries she’s gotten to know him too well while he was making himself at home inside her head. He’ll use and abuse her, hurt her inadvertently to meet his own ends, but he’s not going to kill her for no reason, if only because it would be too messy—Peter doesn’t like messy unless he gets something out of it, and her death gives him nothing.

“I’m not going to threaten him,” she says finally. “But he’s not getting off the hook for what he did to me. To all of us. Okay? He’s just _not_. And I can’t exactly just go to the police—”

Her voice cracks and then fades entirely, and she spins her chair abruptly to face the wall. She isn’t going to cry here. She isn’t going to cry over Peter Hale ever again. Stiles shuffles across the floor in his blanket, but he doesn’t stand or touch her, just leans his shoulder against the desk leg. His voice is softer than usual. “Hey. You’re right that we can’t—I mean, I don’t want to get my dad involved with him. But we could—you know. Maybe we could take him out.”

Lydia laughs wetly. “What?”

“Look, I don’t know _exactly_ how to kill a werewolf, but I learned this pretty cool trick with mountain ash, I don’t know if you heard, I’m kind of a big deal—” Stiles cuts himself off. “No, not joking right now. We can probably trap him. And then maybe… if we ask Allison or her dad…”

Lydia turns in her chair to look down at him. He’s as earnest as she’s ever seen him, and she almost, _almost_ might trust him. “It’s strange, but… I’m not sure I want him dead. I don’t know how to explain. But everything he put me through to come back… it’s almost like if we just kill him again, that was all for nothing. I want _more_.”

“Actually, that makes sense,” Stiles says. He cocks his head. “What’s more? Like, torture? You want to torture him?”

She appreciates that he’s volunteering torture as if he wouldn’t seem too put off if she said yes. However, it’s sadly less ambitious than what she had in mind. She fixes him with a steady look and shakes her head. “I want him to _apologize_. Is Derek going to get in my way or not?”

* * *

Lydia’s original plan was vague by necessity. She needed to get a better sense of the pieces on the board before she started sketching out strategical moves. The first step had been finding Derek and figuring out what he planned to do about his uncle. The second step, it seems, is going to be meeting both of them.

Coming face-to-face with Peter is almost the very last thing Lydia wants to do right now, but she’s so _sick_ of that. She doesn’t want to be afraid anymore. She doesn’t want to spend the next two years looking over her shoulder for monsters in the night. Or monsters in her bed, as it were. She still wakes up sometimes expecting to glance to her right and see him there, claws out, a waking nightmare who looks unfairly like a dream.

She’s always had a thing for blue eyes. Peter may yet ruin that for her too.

She lets Stiles arrange the meeting and accompany her. He wants to bring Scott, but Lydia doesn’t want the distraction—she doesn’t know exactly what’s going on between Scott and Derek, but it’s nothing she wants to get in the middle of—so he brings his baseball bat instead.

He walks ahead of her toward the old Hale house, bat raised slightly as if he expects something to jump out from behind the trees. She would protest, but she’s glad he can’t see the look on her face when they first hear Peter’s voice. _No more fear_ , she tells herself.

“I will never understand why you insist on spending so much time out here.” Peter sounds more disdainful than curious. “Do you enjoy it? Or is it some sort of punishment?”

“I’m sorry, do you think I should have shown the humans where I actually live? You do remember who Lydia Martin’s best friend is?” Derek’s impatience is barely contained in his voice.

“I do, but I have an excuse. Why do _you_ know so much about the teenage social scene in Beacon Hills?” Peter is entirely too amused with himself, but then he pauses. “Wait, humans plural? You think they’re both human? Oh, Derek.”

“Oh, get off your high horse,” Derek snaps. “Your excuse is that you were stalking a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“Haunting. I was _haunting_ her,” Peter says, unbothered. “Anyway, she’s seventeen now. And trust me, she’s not just a girl.”

Stiles twists around to look at her, and then promptly trips over a tree root. She steps neatly over him. If she’d known there would be so much walking involved, she wouldn’t have worn heels. Didn’t the Hales have a driveway? Stiles scrambles to follow, but Lydia is already stopping into view of the front porch. Derek is standing with his arms crossed, but Peter is lounging on the steps like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Lydia focuses on Derek. “Well? Am I supposed to bow, or roll over and show you my belly?”

Derek loosens his stance. Lydia can see how he’d come across as intimidating, with his muscles and his perfect hair and the stubble of a man who is too busy brooding to shave, but she can’t be fooled by such an amateur act. Here is an awkward boy with no clue how to wield his power. As if to prove it, he says, “You don’t have to do any of that.”

“Though if you’d like to pull your shirt up, I’m sure none of us would be complaining,” Peter says lazily, but the words are empty. It’s like he’s not even trying to play big bad wolf. Lydia is less than impressed.

Still, Stiles starts forward with his bat, and that gets a real reaction—Peter laughs. Derek snaps his head to the side and says, “Stiles is right. Don’t talk to her.”

“I think I’ll decide that, thank you.” Lydia steps forward and finally meets Peter’s stare, cocking her head thoughtfully to hide how cold she suddenly feels. “You see, I _would_ , but I’ve recently developed the most horrible scars.”

“But what else have you developed?” he says softly. “Or haven’t you figured that part out yet?”

“Lydia.” Derek’s voice is gentle in a way that is much more believable than Peter’s. “Stiles said you wanted to talk.”

She spins toward him. “I want to know what you’re going to do about Peter.”

“Excuse me,” Peter says mildly.

Lydia ignores him. “You killed him once. It didn’t take. So, what? Oh, well, guess we’ll just let him free to terrorize more teenagers?”

“The way I hear it, Derek has been the one terrorizing teenagers,” Peter says. He sounds so _amused_. She thinks about punching him. Better yet, she thinks about taking Stiles’s baseball bat and using his head as the ball. More likely to hurt him, and she won’t even ruin her manicure.

“I won’t let him hurt anyone,” Derek says, but even he doesn’t sound like he believes it.

“And I guess there’s no werewolf jail,” Lydia says bitterly. Derek shakes his head, but there’s something interesting—Peter finally looks wary. Lydia feels a thrill of something—hope, maybe—but it dies as quickly as it’s born. Not even the grave could keep Peter; a cell isn’t going to make her feel any safer.

“I am sorry,” Derek says. “For what he did to you.”

“To me? What about what he did to Scott? To Stiles? What he tried to do to Allison?”

“I gave Scott a gift he didn’t deserve. And I didn’t do _anything_ to Stiles—he wouldn’t let me.” Peter actually sounds petulant. Then he grimaces. “Allison, I do regret. Not my finest moment.”

That makes even Derek look at him in surprise. Stiles blurts out, “You do? But—you’re evil.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “So you’ve decided, yes. But I wanted to get revenge on those responsible, not hurt an innocent child because of her last name. I’d prefer to leave that to the hunters. Though—she’s not so very innocent anymore, is she?”

Derek clenches his jaw and changes the subject. “What do you mean, Stiles wouldn’t let you?”

“He offered me the bite,” Stiles says. “What, he didn’t tell you?”

“And you said no?” Derek asks.

“Yeah, I—you didn’t know?” Stiles asks again.

Derek makes an impatient noise. “What does it matter?”

“Because you turned _Isaac_. And Erica. And Boyd. And, oh my god, _Jackson_. You didn’t even think to ask me?”

Lydia would think Stiles’s affront is ridiculous, but what’s worse is that Peter sits up looking just as offended. “Hold on. Are you saying you’d have said yes if Derek offered?”

“No, but that’s not the point!” Stiles says.

Derek growls at him. Lydia wishes she could do that sometimes. “Boys,” she says. “Can we stay on topic?”

“Yes, because it’s one I’m so eager to discuss,” Peter says.

“If you don’t want to be treated like a criminal, maybe don’t do crimes,” Stiles tells him.

“I haven’t done a single crime since I got back,” Peter protests.

“You tried to kill Jackson!”

“So did Derek.”

Lydia hits Stiles’s shoulder, though she regrets it when he winces. He hasn’t told her the truth about where he got those bruises, but she doesn’t need him to tell her that his face wasn’t the worst of it. She runs her hand down his arm in apology. “Are you done? Because I would really like to get out of the actual woods.”

Derek squares his shoulders. It’s like she can see him putting on the Alpha mantle, and she can see how poorly it fits. It clicks, then—why he hasn’t killed Peter or sent him away. It’s almost cute, that he still wants to look up to his uncle. “What do you want me to do?”

Peter makes a face, and Lydia feels suddenly like they’re thinking the exact same thing. Derek tries to make it sound like he’s willing to entertain her wishes, but it comes out too close to asking her to tell him what to do. That’s what cements Lydia’s decision. “I want you to make him your beta. For _real_. Get him under control and keep him that way.”

“That’s what you came here for?” Derek asks.

“I came to make sure something was going to be done,” Lydia says primly. “It’s clear to me now this is the best thing. You can’t lock him up, and sending him away only makes him someone else’s problem, if he didn’t just come back anyway. Killing him didn’t work the first time, we’d be idiots to try the same thing twice. So we’re just going to have to tame him.”

“We?” Peter says with interest. “Are you volunteering to help with this little experiment?”

“Just the beginning.” Lydia gives him a sweet smile. “You so generously gave me that little nudge, after all, I thought I’d return the favor. I came to get something from you too.”

“I’m sure you’re welcome to any part of me,” Peter says.

“Gross,” Stiles mutters. He whacks his bat in the dirt like he’s picturing Peter’s face.

Lydia approaches Peter slowly, like the wild animal he is. He leans back on his elbows, so she’s still looking down on him. “I came to get an apology.”

She’s pretty sure he didn’t actually think she wanted what his innuendo implied, but she doesn’t know what he did think, because that surprises him. Slowly, he says, “I have to say, Lydia, I’m disappointed. I didn’t think one measly apology would be enough to win your forgiveness.”

“Oh, it won’t,” she says. “Not even close.”

Peter looks outraged. “Then why—”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” she tells him. “You did something _wrong_. You hurt me. You’re supposed to say you’re sorry, and then I get to decide whether I forgive you.”

“One problem,” he says. “I’m not sorry. If I hadn’t done it, I’d still be dead.”

“And that’s my problem, how?” she asks.

“How about this.” Peter sits up and rests his elbows on his knees. “How about some good old-fashioned payback? I bit you, so you can bite me. Anywhere you like, sweetheart.”

Lydia holds a hand out behind her. “Stiles, give me your bat.”

The smile falls off Peter’s face. “Let me rephrase that. I’m not sorry I did it, and I’m not sorry that it worked, but I’m sorry you had to get hurt. If I could do it over without harming you, physically or mentally, I would.”

“Hm.” Lydia rests a hand on her hip. “What do you think, boys?”

Derek shakes his head, but he’s pretty sure it’s less a judgment of Peter’s apology and more a request to be left out of this part of the proceedings. Stiles says, “I don’t know, it was pretty underwhelming.”

Lydia sighs, put-upon. “I suppose it’ll do. I accept your apology, Peter, but I don’t forgive you. Now apologize to Stiles.”

Peter looks betrayed. “But I didn’t even—”

“You know what you did.”

This time when Peter rolls his eyes, his whole body gets in on the gesture, rocking to the side. Lydia realizes abruptly that she’s almost forgotten to be scared of him. She didn’t realize how much of a diva he is when she was too busy being traumatized by his theatrics, but it’s impossible to miss now. Obediently, he says, “Stiles, I’m sorry for kidnapping you. And throwing you over a trunk with a dead body in it. And bending your car keys and leaving you stranded in a parking garage. I’m not sorry for trying to kill you just a little, because at the time you were trying to _set me on fire_.”

Stiles shrugs. “It was the only thing we knew could kill a werewolf.”

Peter cocks his head. “Clever. Practical. I’m impressed. Do _you_ accept my apology?”

Stiles glances at Lydia like he wants to take his cues from her. She inclines her head. His call. Stiles thwacks his bat into the palm of his hand and nods. “Okay. Yeah, but only on the condition that you make right with Scott and his mom too.”

Peter throws his head back with a groan. “I changed my mind. Derek, just kill me again.”

“I don’t think this redemption arc is going to work out,” Stiles tells her.

“For your information,” Peter says, “I don’t know how you planned to explain to Melissa that I’ve miraculously come back to life, but I’ve already sent her flowers at the hospital with an anonymous thank-you note.”

“Flowers?” Derek says doubtfully.

“There may also have been diamond earrings. It’s not important.”

“Hey, why didn’t we get any flowers?” Stiles asks. Then he narrows his eyes. “Wait, you’re not trying to make a move on Scott’s mom again, are you?”

“Did I not _just_ say that I wouldn’t be explaining my resurrection to her?”

“This has been fun,” Lydia says, “but I think we’re done here. Stiles?”

“Sure. I mean, I think Peter does owe one more apology.” His eyes flick to Derek. “But I guess that’s not our business.”

“We’ve done our part,” Lydia agrees. Peter’s eyes have gone cold again at Stiles’s words, and she can feel that chill in her bones. She abruptly wants to be far away from here. For a moment, she’d forgotten how dangerous he is. She hadn’t even thought that was possible. She nods to Derek, and then grabs Stiles’s arm—gentler, this time—and drags him away.

“That was impressive,” he tells her, once they must be out of even werewolf hearing. “I mean, you totally made him your bitch.”

* * *

The next day, Lydia receives a flower arrangement at home. It’s a bouquet of purple tulips and yellow roses. She has to give him points for originality. Stiles texts her a picture of his own—a cluster of red, orange, and yellow carnations—with the message: _does this look like fire to you? it looks like fire, right? is this a threat?_

She doesn’t bother to answer. She sets her vase on the desk in her room and tells her mother they’re from Jackson.

There’s a plan in place. She’s gotten her closure.

She never has to see Peter Hale again.

That night, she dreams of kissing his rotting corpse in an empty house. She throws up, but she makes it to the sink and she doesn’t cry, so she’ll mark it down as a win.


	2. Chapter 2

A week later, Peter Hale buys her coffee.

She’s meeting Stiles, because Jackson is in London and Allison is in France and Lydia doesn’t have the energy to talk to anyone who doesn’t _know_. She plans to have a serious discussion with him about their relationship, just not the one he’s probably hoping for. She’s mentally rehearsing some of the better lines that had occurred to her before bed last night when, at the cash register, the barista tells her that her iced mocha has been paid for. And there’s Peter, leaning against the counter waiting for his own drink.

She stomps over without fully thinking it through. “What exactly are you doing?”

Then Peter meets her eyes, and whatever brief moment of fury had driven her is washed out in an icy cold wave. Her hands start shaking, and she doesn’t have any pockets to hide them in. Peter pretends not to notice. “You look like you need the caffeine. Not sleeping well?”

“You did predict the nightmares,” she says dryly.

Peter looks down at the counter. “Yes, well. I didn’t think I’d have to actually see the effects.”

Lydia’s mouth drops open. “Well, I’m so sorry to _inconvenience_ you with my trauma.”

“Thank you,” Peter says. “You’re forgiven. See how easy that was?”

Two drinks are set down in front of Peter, and Lydia thinks about throwing both of them in his face. One is even hot. The other distracts her. “Frozen hot chocolate? You got a… frozen hot chocolate?”

She doesn’t know how to explain her preoccupation other than that it just doesn’t compute. Evil werewolves don’t drink frozen hot chocolate. Peter’s lips twitch. “It’s for Derek. The role of a beta can be remarkably like the role of an intern at times. Coffee runs, and the like.”

“Sure.” Lydia shakes her head. “So, what—you bought me coffee because you’re feeling guilty?”

Peter reaches for a tray, and she gets the sense he’s deliberately keeping his hands busy. “As you said, one apology isn’t going to make up for what I did to you. I thought I’d try other tactics.”

“Since when do you care about making up for it?” Lydia asks.

Peter lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “That’s a longer conversation.” Then he leans over the counter and flashes a charming smile at the barista. “Hi, any chance I could borrow one of those markers? Thanks, sweetheart.”

The girl blushes as she hands it over, which is just all kinds of wrong and gives Lydia an actual stomachache. Where are this girl’s survival instincts? Doesn’t she sense the danger? She’s going to get herself eaten alive. Lydia wants to stop her, to save her, but Peter isn’t even glancing in her direction. He’s writing a phone number on a napkin and sliding it toward Lydia. She takes it without thinking. “What is this supposed to be?”

“My number.” He holds up a hand to forestall any protest. “I’m not expecting any social calls. I’m told I owe you. This is how to reach me if you want to collect.”

And, well. Lydia collects favors like she collects secrets. All of it adds up to power, and she’s never been one to turn that down.

Peter leaves, and she claims a nice quiet corner table. She watches out the window as he runs into Stiles on the sidewalk. Stiles stops and stares the same way she had, like something in his brain has broken at the sight of Peter doing something so ordinary as carrying coffees on a Friday morning. He says something—by the look on his face, it’s something stupid, which is confirmed when Peter snarls at him, and Lydia jumps so hard she bangs her knee on the underside of the table.

She has to quickly blink back tears at the pain, but at least it’s _just_ the pain, and has nothing to do with the way her breathing has gone shallow and her heart is beating out of her chest.

Suddenly, Peter goes still. He turns and looks through the window at her, head cocked as if he’s—he’s _listening_. Can he hear her heartbeat? She sits frozen, unable to do anything but stare back, waiting for his eyes to glow red, for him to smash through the window between them like the night he’d first shown her about werewolves.

Then he shakes his head at her, just once. And disappears down the sidewalk.

Stiles stays put and watches him go, so Lydia manages to get herself under control by the time he walks into the coffeeshop and makes a beeline for her. She’s surprised when the first thing out of his mouth is still: “Are you okay? He didn’t do anything, did he?”

She raises an eyebrow. “He bought me a coffee. What did you say to him?”

Stiles breaks into a grin and takes the seat across from her without even buying a drink. “Lydia, it was incredible. He came over to talk to Scott yesterday and apologize for, get this, for biting him without his consent. And Scott was all like without my consent? What does that even mean, why wouldn’t you apologize for biting me at all? And Peter got all offended and was like _the bite is a gift_ , and you could tell he wanted to call Scott an idiot the whole time but he didn’t, and they went back and forth for like twenty minutes about whether or not he ruined Scott’s life. Scott was all like I lost my girlfriend, and Peter was like you only even had her in the first place because I made you more than an asthmatic dork. It was a whole thing. And then finally Peter said he was lucky he was getting any apology at all after what he did to Derek, and he totally made a big dramatic exit, and then Scott looks at me with those big puppy eyes and says wait, what did I do to Derek?”

The ending clearly doesn’t land as well as Stiles is expecting. Lydia frowns. “What did he do to Derek? I’m not exactly in the loop, remember?”

“Oh.” Stiles wavers. “Ah, I don’t know, it wasn’t cool, I guess. He pretty much tricked him into biting Gerard. It was… I mean, it was a good plan, but the way Peter was talking, it was like Derek got taken advantage of. Which, he _did_ , but for a good cause? Like, Scott totally thought Derek would be fine with it, after, once he realized. But Derek and Peter both talk like the bite is this sacred thing, so I guess being forced to give it to Gerard after what the Argents have done to their family probably, uh. Sucked.”

“Probably,” Lydia agrees, mind racing. She doesn’t like how little she actually knows about werewolves, with how many of them seem to be around. Scott is clearly not the person to ask for more information. She wonders if Derek might have a book he could lend her.

Then Stiles comes back to the table with a drink of his own and an assortment of pastries, and Lydia has to fight down another jump, because she hadn’t even realized he’d left. He probably said something to her, but she was too caught up in her head to notice. It doesn’t mean she’s losing time again. It doesn’t.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” he asks.

Lydia reaches for a blueberry scone, then narrows her eyes at the muted way Stiles lights up, like he knew she’d choose that one. She folds her hands on the table in front of her. “Stiles, I like you. I think we could be friends. But I’m not sure you like me.”

Stiles’s face goes through a series of complicated, overexaggerated expressions. He settles on disbelief. “Are you kidding? Lydia, I’ve—”

“Been obsessed with me since the third grade, I’m aware,” she says. “Obsession does not equal _like_ , and frankly, I don’t think you realize how creepy it is. It makes me uncomfortable.”

Stiles’s fingers stop twitching on the table. “ _I_ make you uncomfortable?”

“Don’t get me wrong, you look harmless. And I’m totally guilty of enjoying it too much sometimes, I do love to be worshipped. I like that you see me, that you know how smart I am. Or you think you know, anyway. I don’t like that it makes you think you have some sort of claim on me.” Lydia tilts her head and waits to read his reaction.

He sits up straighter. “Hold up. Hold the fuck up. When have I ever—”

“When I came to you after the lacrosse game. When I thought Jackson was dead. I wanted to help him, and you gave me a whole speech about how _you_ would feel if I died. We’re barely even friends, and you _scolded_ for me being willing to take a risk for someone I have an actual relationship with. That’s the instance that stands out most to me,” she says pleasantly.

He’s not so defensive this time. He deflates and twists his coffee cup around in his hands. “Yeah, I can see that. I have—I have sort of a thing about losing people, I guess, and I’d sort of been through some shit the night before—”

“The bruises,” Lydia says. “Will you tell me what really happened?”

Stiles flicks his eyes up to look at her. Good. He knows it’s a test. If he trusts her with this, respects her enough to tell her the truth or at the very least admit that the lie about the rival lacrosse team _wasn’t_ the truth, she’ll know he’s willing to meet her halfway. He nods slowly. “Gerard Argent. He wanted to send Scott a message.”

Lydia takes a napkin and the blueberry scone and rewards him with a smile. “I’m glad he’s dying.”

He looks surprised. She’s not sure if it’s because she feels that way or because she said it out loud. His smile is smaller than usual. “Me too.”

“Good. Do I need to go over the rest of the ways you’ve crossed boundaries or implied that I owe you somehow for your dutiful devotion over the years, or are we good there too?”

“I think I can figure it out, thanks.”

Lydia studies him. “I hope you know that the only reason we’re even having this conversation is because I think you’re worth it. I don’t make a habit of trying to teach boys how to behave, that’s not my job.”

“You did with Peter,” he points out.

“Because I needed closure.” She isn’t the daughter of a psychiatrist for nothing. “ _This_ is because I don’t want to hang out with you all summer and then hear you whining to Scott about the friendzone. As if my friendship is some sort of consolation prize for not getting to stick your dick in me.”

“But you do want to hang out with me all summer?” he asks.

Lydia gives him a look. _Don’t be an idiot_.

“Okay, okay.”

* * *

The next night, Lydia dreams that Peter is on fire. He’s sitting in the corner of her bedroom and burning. The smoke is making her eyes water, but he doesn’t seem bothered. Lydia screams, but Peter doesn’t. He just watches her, his eyes disconcertingly blue in his soot-covered face.

She wakes up. She’s not entirely sure he’s not still there.

The worst is the smell. It crawls up her throat like something physical. She shouldn’t know what it smells like when someone is burning alive, not unless it’s really happening in front of her.

Before she can think better of it, she calls Peter. “Where are you?”

“Where am… Lydia? It’s two in the morning. Do you know who you’re calling?” His voice is rough with sleep, not quite up to his usual level of smooth and infuriating, and somehow that’s worse.

She fists her hand in her hair and _pulls_. “Yes, because I’m not an idiot. Tell me where you are.”

“I can’t, Derek doesn’t want anyone knowing. You’re the one who wants me to listen to my alpha—”

“Peter, I swear to god—”

“What are you really asking?”

She takes a deep breath. It doesn’t taste so much like charred flesh. “You’re with Derek? Wherever it is you’re hiding? You’re not, I don’t know, in my closet or under my bed or lurking outside my window with red eyes?”

“Oh, sweetheart.” He’s back to his usual syrupy sarcasm. “Does someone need to come check your room for monsters?”

Lydia hangs up on him.

* * *

Derek Hale is on her doorstep the next morning, looking like it’s the last place he wants to be. He’s holding an iced mocha, which he shoves at her like it’s about to explode. Lydia takes it with one hand and smooths her messy hair with the other. She hasn’t put her makeup on yet. She hasn’t put a _bra_ on yet. She crosses an arm over her chest and raises her eyebrows. Derek might be the strong, silent type, but she can wait him out.

“Peter asked me to check on you,” he says finally.

Lydia considers shutting the door in his face, but she’d like to hear the story behind that. She points to the breakfast bar. “Go sit down. I’ll be right back.”

She puts on a bra under her nightgown and a cardigan over it. She brushes her hair and ties it into a bun at the nape of her neck. Then she pauses at the bottom of the stairs and takes some small pleasure in how uncomfortable Derek looks perched on one of the stools in her mother’s bright white kitchen.

“You didn’t get anything for yourself?” she asks, taking the seat across from him.

“I don’t drink coffee,” he says.

Lydia hums around her straw. “You just deliver it to teenage girls at your uncle’s request?”

“I wouldn’t usually,” Derek tells her. “I wanted to make sure he wasn’t bothering you. All he said is that you called him late last night, but…”

“But you can’t actually trust a word he says.”

Derek nods once.

She considers him carefully. “He bought me coffee the day before yesterday too. Any idea what he’s up to?”

To her surprise, Derek gives her a sour look. “You don’t know? It’s your fault.”

“Excuse me?”

“You gave him the idea of actually making up for the things he did. He’s being _nice_.” Derek’s tone says clearly that he thinks it’s a dirty trick.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t give him that idea. He went to you first thing when he came back, didn’t he?”

“Yes, and he tried to make himself useful. That’s Peter’s instinct, it always has been. Not… thinking of other people. You did that.”

“Oh, no. Don’t you dare.” She gives him her best threatening glare. “If you try to make this into some Beauty and the Beast story and tell me I’m _good_ for him, I don’t care if you’re a werewolf, I will end you.”

Gratifyingly, Derek’s eyes go wide. “That wasn’t what I meant. I’m not here to—he’s my responsibility, not yours.”

She relaxes. “I’m glad we understand each other. Though, out of curiosity—he’s being nice to you too?”

Derek looks pained. “It’s complicated.”

She resists the urge to roll her eyes. His communication could use work. Maybe she should make him an appointment with her mother. No, she reminds herself, she’s not in the business of fixing broken werewolves. “Fine, don’t tell me. I only asked because Stiles mentioned you might have been struggling with something.”

“Stiles is an idiot,” Derek says automatically. Then his brows draw together. “What did he say?”

“Something about Scott and Gerard violating you.”

Derek grimaces. “I’m fine.”

“Peter didn’t seem to think so.”

Derek gives her a disbelieving look. “How do you know these things?”

“I know everything,” she tells him. Truthfully, she only knows most things, but she’s good at pretending to know the rest. She does know that Derek is not fine. He might even be as lonely as she is. “Do you want to get brunch?”

“Brunch?”

“Yes. You know, the meal between breakfast and lunch? Waffles, eggs benedict, mimosas? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“You’re not old enough to drink mimosas.” Derek looks wary. “You’re not asking me out, are you?”

“Please. If I were asking you out, you’d know.”

Some of the tension eases out of Derek. She can almost hear him thinking—he wants to say no, but he feels too guilty. He thinks it’s his job to make up for what Peter did to her. He might even expect her to want to cry on his shoulder. Whatever gets him to the table. “Fine. We’ll get brunch.”

* * *

It goes well. Lydia gets some of her questions answered. Derek looks at her at one point and says, “You know, between the two of us, Peter and I have bitten a total of six people. You’re the one who didn’t turn, and yet you’ve asked more questions about what it actually means to be a werewolf than all the others combined.”

Lydia wants to make a quip about how they should have chosen their betas more carefully, but she bites her tongue at the last second, remembering Erica and Boyd.

Once she’s home, she wants to ask more questions, but not of Derek. She wants to know why she didn’t turn, and only one person seems to have that answer, though Derek has promised to lend her some literature.

She pulls up Peter’s name and types out: _What am I?_

Then she erases it.

_Why did you send Derek to bring me coffee?_

His reply comes only a few minutes later. _Because I thought you wouldn’t want to see me_.

She rolls her eyes. She’s about to tell him that wasn’t what she meant when he follows up with: _That was the only thing I knew you liked. And I knew you didn’t sleep well again._

_What did you do to my nephew?_

_He’s smiling._

That night, she dreams of Derek slashing Peter’s throat and burying him under their old house.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my favorite chapter so far. Like, I knew this fic was going to be self-indulgent when I started it, but wow.

Lydia shows up at Stiles’s place with two strawberry lemonades and her laptop. He’s wearing sweatpants with a dark green t-shirt that actually suits his coloring nicely, and he has a video game controller dangling from one hand when he opens the door. His eyes have the glazed look of someone who has been staring a screen for an uncountable number of hours. His greeting is: “Huh?”

She hopes Summer Vacation Stiles’s brain isn’t too fried to help her. “Hi. Want to research the supernatural? Derek sent me all the Hale archives that Peter digitized.”

“Fuck, yeah,” Stiles breathes.

They camp out at the kitchen table with their laptops and their lemonades; Stiles hesitates a moment over his, and Lydia chooses to believe it’s because he’s worried that it will be too tart and not that she’s trying to drug him with hallucinogens again.

“Are we looking for anything specific?” he asks. “Or just general awesomeness? I mean, you have no idea how spoiled I feel right now. I’ve spent months wading through random shit online to piece together a few things that _might_ be true about the supernatural. And then there’s what you translated from the Argents’ bestiary, but let me tell you, that is a seriously biased source.”

Lydia props her chin on her palm. “To be fair, this could easily be biased in the other direction. But I want to know about werewolves. I mean, how many are there in town now? And something Derek said at brunch makes me think more are coming—"

Stiles’s head jerks up. “I’m sorry, did you just say you were at brunch with Derek?”

Lydia pauses. She’s not sure if this is jealousy or something else.

“Brunch. With _Derek Hale_. How even—I really can’t picture that.”

“Me with Derek?”

“Derek eating _brunch_.”

She laughs. “He also drinks frozen hot chocolate.”

Stiles throws his hands in the air and shakes his head like he just can’t believe it.

She fights back a smile. “Anyway. I want to know the extent of their powers. Their weaknesses. Information on pack hierarchy, pack life in general—cultural differences might be important.”

Stiles bobs his head. “The works. I get it.”

“And… immunity to the bite.” She tosses her hair back. Under the table, she presses a hand to the scars on her side. “If you find anything about that, let me know.”

They don’t find anything about that.

They’re at the table for hours, and there’s no mention of it. They find plenty of other interesting things; Lydia has a separate document open full of follow-up questions she wants to ask Derek next time she sees him.

But Derek doesn’t know about her, he’s made that clear.

Lydia blows out a breath and rubs her forehead. “Stiles, tell me the truth. Would I be an idiot to ask Peter?”

“You could never be an idiot,” Stiles says automatically. She drops her hand and gives him a look, but he’s already caught himself, widening his eyes and slurping the dregs of his lemonade. He’s still nursing it even though all the ice has melted and it has to be warm. He sets it down and clears his throat. “Sorry. Look, I vote against talking to Peter just on principle, but here’s an idea. We could ask him, as long as we take whatever he says with a _huge_ grain of salt, because it might give us a new lead. Like, whatever he says, we can research _that_ and fact-check it.”

“Except we’d be fact-checking it with his own archives,” Lydia points out. “It’s far-fetched, but he digitized them after he woke up, right? So, he was already scheming? He could have planted false information knowing we might… that I’d eventually want…”

Stiles scrunches up his nose. “We could ask Derek for the original hard copies?”

“It’s better than nothing,” Lydia decides. She pulls out her phone.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Texting Peter.”

“You have Peter’s phone number? Wait, Peter has a _phone_?”

Lydia rolls her eyes.

“Are you inviting him here?” Stiles slumps in his chair and shrugs when she looks at him questioningly. “If you are, tell him to bring dinner. I want Chinese.”

That wasn’t her plan—she doesn’t make a habit of inviting guests to other people’s houses, and she especially wouldn’t think to bring a former murderer into the sheriff’s home. But Stiles tells her the sheriff is working until midnight, and he’s careful to say that it’s totally her choice and none of his business, but it’s probably best not to meet Peter alone.

Lydia wants to point out that she wouldn’t be alone if she asked Peter to her house instead—her mom should be home by now. And then she thinks about introducing Peter to her mother, and she can’t decide if the thought is chilling or hilarious.

For some reason, she expects Peter to simply materialize in the kitchen, but after about an hour, he knocks politely on the door. Stiles debates for a moment about leaving his bat propped against the counter, but eventually goes to answer it empty-handed.

She hears him say, “Hey, that’s not Chinese food.”

“Yes, it is,” Peter says.

“It’s not Beijing’s.”

“Did you expect me to bring you food from an actual city in China?”

“It’s the best Chinese restaurant in Beacon Hills, you ass.”

“Well, this isn’t from Beacon Hills. I was out of town when I got your message, so I got the good stuff.” The last part is directed at her as Peter walks into the room. She sees his gaze rove over their open laptops, Stiles’s yellow legal pad full of scribbled notes, their empty lemonade cups. A smile teases at his mouth as he lifts two bulging plastic bags of food onto the table. “Productive day, children?”

“What were you doing out of town?” Stiles says suspiciously.

Peter heaves a sigh. “ _What_ makes you think that’s any of your business?”

“You’re supposed to be being good,” Lydia reminds him.

“You wanted me to be a good beta,” he says. “Derek is the one who sent me out.”

“Oh.” Stiles’s arms, folded across his chest, drop to his sides. “Were you looking for Erica and Boyd?”

“Among other things,” Peter says.

Stiles leans over the table. “What other things?”

Peter leans close like he’s going to impart crucial information—then he flicks Stiles on the nose. The way Stiles’s eyes go crossed as he flails back makes Lydia nearly fall off her chair laughing. Peter looks far too pleased with himself, and Lydia waits for the familiar wave of terror, because a victorious Peter has never meant good things for her, but it’s hard to be terrified of a werewolf meticulously laying out six cartons of egg rolls for two teenagers.

Lydia reaches over and snags a fortune cookie. There’s a whole pile; Peter must have asked for extra. It seems so human of him.

Stiles peeks into the second bag when he notices it isn’t fully empty, and Peter slaps his hand away. “Not yours.”

“What, are you preemptively saving leftovers for yourself?” Stiles asks.

Peter gives him a long-suffering look. “You’ll just take any opportunity to make me the bad guy, won’t you? That’s for Derek and Isaac.”

“Werewolves eating Chinese food,” Stiles says, mostly to himself.

“Did you think we only ate cute forest animals?” Peter asks, grabbing a carton of lo mein and two of the egg rolls and taking a seat. At the opposite end of the table from Lydia, she notices.

“Honestly? It’s hard to imagine you or Derek eating anything.” Stiles pokes at an egg roll with a pair of chopsticks. “Isaac, of course, eats only the hearts of small children.”

“Actually, Isaac and Derek both prefer sweet and sour chicken,” Peter says casually, as if it shouldn’t be weird that he knows that.

Stiles drops his eggroll. “No fair, that’s my favorite!”

Peter rolls his eyes. He wields his chopsticks with one hand, and with the other, shuffles the cartons on the table around until he finds the one he wants and then nudges it over to Stiles. It’s full of fried chicken covered in sticky red sauce. Stiles makes a pleased noise and grabs the white rice.

Lydia can’t believe this is her life.

She breaks apart a second fortune cookie. “Okay. I have questions.”

Peter inclines his head and waves his chopsticks. “I did assume I wasn’t invited here because you missed my company.”

“Why didn’t I turn or die when you bit me?” Lydia asks.

The look Peter gives her says clearly that he expected better. “Because you’re immune. Haven’t I said?”

“Hey,” Stiles warns. “You don’t want us to make you the bad guy, stop getting off on knowing more than a couple of human kids.”

Peter sighs. “Stiles, I have so few pleasures left in life. But you’re just not catching on. Didn’t you hear me say you’re not both completely human?”

Half of Lydia’s fortune cookie crumbles in her hand. “What am I? _Why_ am I immune? I want a straight answer, Peter.”

He sets down his food, leans his elbows on the table, and gives her his full attention. It makes her breath stutter, and Peter pauses, but Lydia keeps her eyes on his. No more fear.

She realizes a moment too late that her mantra rings truer than it should—she _isn’t_ afraid. Fear isn’t what has her heart beating strangely, and from the considering look on Peter’s face, he knows it.

Finally, he says, “What do you know about banshees?”

* * *

That night, Lydia doesn’t dream.

* * *

The night after, she dreams about Peter before she knew who he was. Even as a teenager, she thought he was creepy, but she’d been an idiot. She’d thought, _no one that pretty can be truly evil_. Unforgivably naïve for someone who has made a career of being underestimated because of her looks.

This time, she lets him kiss her by the pool. She brings him to her bed. She lets him strip her out of her floral dress without shame, because she never wears underwear she wouldn’t want anyone to see. She straddles him and shivers as those blue eyes rake over her black bra. She likes that he’s observant, discerning—not like every other boy who wouldn’t properly appreciate the way the dark satin contrasts with her pale skin. He sits up and kisses her neck, then rolls her underneath him—

Then he’s not a nameless, infuriating boy anymore. It’s Peter, post-resurrection, lying over her and watching her carefully for a reaction. Lydia feels a familiar thrill, one part fear and one part something else. She grips his shoulder and arches into the press of his body, gasping. As if that’s what he was waiting for, he kisses her neck again, and then down over the swell of her breast. Her hand moves from his shoulder to his hair as he gets lower. She parts her legs in invitation, but he stops at her waist.

He hovers there. She can feel his breath hot on her skin. Her heart is beating so hard, it hurts, she’s nearly choking—

Peter presses his mouth to the scars he left just as Lydia wakes up, choking on a mouthful of her pillowcase.

She takes a deep breath and then groans into her pillow. She wants to scream, but she won’t, not after what Peter told them about wailing women. She’s so hot, she stumbles out of bed a moment later and throws open the window that has stayed firmly locked for months. The summer night is sticky, and so are the insides of her thighs.

It’s the heat. The heat is making her dizzy and senseless. That’s the only explanation for why she grabs her phone and texts Peter: _Come over_.

Only after does she the check the time. 4:02am. Peter’s reply is nearly instantaneous. _Not a good time. Is something wrong?_

Clearly, something is very wrong with her. _Would I be texting you otherwise?_

 _Are you in danger?_ he asks.

If he says yes, she will be. Some deeply buried self-preservation instincts decide this is the moment to kick in and test him. _Would you come if I was?_

_Yes. I owe you._

_But I owe Derek too, and he has his own nightmares. So if you’re not on the verge of death or dismemberment…_

That throws Lydia just far enough to bring her back to earth. She texts that she’s fine and then drops her phone to the carpet. She considers throwing herself out the window.

Instead, she showers off the sweat and the self-disgust. She gets back into bed with cookie dough ice cream and her laptop open to Netflix. She won’t be sleeping again tonight—for her own good. She thinks about texting Stiles, because there’s a solid chance he’s still awake playing that online fantasy game he’s been trying to convince her to try.

Then she remembers just how tired Derek looked the morning he brought her coffee. The exhaustion in his voice when he said he was fine. She sends, _You get nightmares too?_

Derek takes longer than Peter. She almost thinks he won’t answer at all, but when she’s halfway through the densest science documentary she can find, her phone lights up again. _Sorry I kept Peter. He said he thought you wanted to use him as a punching bag._

Lydia snorts, especially when he follows up with: _In my defense, I told him to go. You using Peter as a punching bag would cheer me up too._

* * *

At eight, Lydia video-calls Allison in France. It’s nine hours ahead there, so Lydia hopes to catch her between gallivanting about the countryside and getting dinner in some cute bistro. That’s what Lydia likes to imagine her best friend is doing, anyway, though she knows there’s probably a lot more grieving and crying involved.

Still, Allison answers with a smile. “Lydia! You’re up early for summer vacation.”

Lydia thinks about trying to claim being busy and important, but she’s clearly still in bed, in her most comfy pajamas, with her hair in a messy bun—and not the cute kind of messy, although she _looks_ cute anyway. Obviously. She runs her gaze over Allison’s appearance. Bags under her eyes, but at least she looks like she’s been getting some sun. Cute top, from what she can see anyway. She narrows her eyes. “You cut your hair.”

Allison flips the new short style. “You like? Is it Lydia-approved?”

“I think so.” Lydia taps her finger against her chin. “You should try a deeper side part. But the length works for you. It makes your pretty face all the more striking.”

Allison blows her a kiss. Then her smile fades, and Lydia thinks about hanging up on her, because she knows what’s coming. “Thanks. Want to tell me why you look so… well, the Lydia Martin version of stressed and depressed?”

“How about because my best friend abandoned me for the French?”

“I wanted to bring you with me,” Allison confides. “But my dad—he’s lost so much, so recently. We needed some family time.”

“Allison,” she says seriously. “I would have been happy to comfort your father in these trying times.”

“It is _so_ not fair for you to make that joke when I’m not there to hit you!” But Allison laughs, so she counts it as a win. It makes her own heart feel lighter. “We’re going to circle back to whatever’s going on with you, but speaking of my dad… I should tell you, I think… I think he’s thinking about staying.”

Just like that, Lydia’s heart drops like a stone again. “You can’t.”

“It’s not exactly my decision,” Allison says.

“Yes, it is, because he would never deny you anything. If you tell him you want to come home—you do want to come home, don’t you?”

Allison bites her lip. “I miss you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Allison closes her eyes. “Can I ask you something that’s totally going to make you hate me?”

It’s almost the end of July. Lydia can hardly believe they’ve made it this far into summer without talking about Scott McCall. She raises her eyebrows as judgmentally as she can, but she doesn’t say no.

“Have you talked to Scott?” Allison asks.

“Why would I have talked to Scott? We’re not friends.” Lydia maintains her haughty expression until Allison widens her big doe eyes, and Lydia shrugs. “Fine. I haven’t talked to Scott, but Stiles says he’s been pretty busy. I guess he’s been doing a lot of reading, or something?”

She examines her manicure like she’s bored, although she notices as she does that she really needs to get her nails done. She doesn’t want to look at Allison’s slow smile. “Since when do you talk to Stiles?”

“Since my best friend basically _moved to France_ ,” Lydia says.

Allison isn’t deterred. “Is there… something there?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lydia makes a face at Allison’s clear disapproval. “Not because it’s Stiles, because—on what planet would I be looking for a boyfriend right now? After Jackson? After—everything? No, thank you. I’m very happy being single.”

“Very happy?” Allison says doubtfully. “I mean, the single part, sure, but… you don’t look happy.”

“You know, I do miss the sex,” Lydia says with a sigh.

To her surprise, Allison sighs with her. “Yeah, me too.”

Then she glances around quickly as if her dad might have heard. Lydia leans forward. “Mr. Argent? That was an invitation, if you’re listening!”

“I will hang up on you,” Allison threatens.

But she doesn’t. They talk until Allison’s dad really does appear in the background making noises about dinner, and Allison makes apologetic faces even as she starts to look for her purse. Lydia regains her attention for a brief moment. “Hey. Promise me something?”

“What is it?”

“If you really do stay in France… just promise me it’ll be because it’s the best thing for you and your dad, and not because of _Scott McCall_ , of all people.”

Allison promises. Her voice is soft. They never did get back around to what’s going on with Lydia.

She drops the phone to her bed and then follows it down, pressing her forehead to her soft comforter. She breathes. In through her nose, out through her mouth. She’s tired in a way that goes deeper than four hours of restless sleep.

Maybe she _will_ sleep again, now that the sun is up.

Then she hears something hit her window, and she shoots upright. She thinks, not for the first time, that she should get her own baseball bat. She tries to convince herself to go look. Then it happens again, and she peers closer. Was that—is someone throwing rocks at her window?

Lydia goes to look.

She calls Peter. “What are you doing down there?”

“You told me to come over,” he reminds her.

“That was…” She checks. “Five hours ago.”

“Are you going to let me in, or not?”

“In the window? Why are you even—why didn’t you just call me? Or come in the front door? My mother isn’t home.”

“I know, I was waiting for her to leave. But then I heard you talking to Allison.”

“You were _listening to that_?”

“Yes, because I have nothing better to do than listen to teenage girls gossip.” Peter pours enough sarcasm into his voice that it doesn’t matter that his expression is hard to make out from this far away. “No, I tuned it out. I just didn’t think Allison would react well to me interrupting.”

Lydia toys with the lock on her window. “Peter, that’s…”

“Slightly rape-y?” he suggests.

The same thing she said to teenage-him. That shouldn’t make her laugh, right? Even if it also makes her panic.

She lets him in.

Peter shuts the window carefully behind him. Then he spreads his arms, turns his face to the side, and squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay, I’m ready. I only ask that you avoid the face. It’s my best feature.”

“No, it’s not,” Lydia says without thinking.

Peter opens one eye to look at her. “Oh? Is _that_ why I’m here?”

Lydia shakes her head and crawls back into bed. “Close the curtains. Is Derek okay?”

“He and Isaac are out hunting,” Peter tells her, which isn’t quite an answer. He hovers by the light switch with a questioning glance, and she nods, so he shuts that too. He admits, “Derek is the one who ordered me to come here.”

“ _Ordered_ you,” Lydia repeats, taking a sleepy sort of pleasure in that.

“Am I here to tuck you in? I’m not sure that’s better than being a punching bag.” Peter is trying to sound annoyed, she can tell, but it comes out closer to amused.

“You’re here because… because every time I try to sleep, I feel like I’m just _waiting_ for you to… to show up and do something, something awful. It doesn’t actually make sense, but I thought maybe, if you’re already _here_ … I don’t have to wait for it.” It’s not entirely a lie. She’s had that thought before. It’s just not what she was thinking last night.

“That does make a strange sort of sense,” Peter muses. “Aside from the part where I’ll be watching you sleep.”

Lydia laughs. “Okay, Edward.”

Peter cocks his head. The best part is she can tell he’s a little offended, like there might really be some other werewolf giving her nightmares and—and not-nightmares, and she might have mixed up their names.

Finally, she says, “It’s a Twilight reference. You probably have a lot of pop culture to catch up on now that you’re done being evil.”

“Vengeful.” He folds his hands behind his back and tilts his head up, looking all kinds of long-suffering. “I wasn’t being evil; I was being _vengeful_. Why do all of you teenagers have such _morals_? It’s all so black-and-white. Oh, Peter killed people, he must be _evil_. Have you never heard of shades of gray?”

Lydia decides she’ll ease him into just how many people have heard of Fifty Shades of Grey. For now, she glares at him where he’s leaning against the wall. “Why is it you had no problem getting into bed with me when you were _vengeful_ and haunting me to the brink of insanity, but _now_ you’ve developed a healthy respect for boundaries?”

Peter’s face turns unreadable. He slowly sits on the edge of the bed. “Maybe you’ve made me want to be a better man.”

“That’s not my job.” Lydia knows she’s whining, but honestly—why does she have to keep telling people that? Is it because of Jackson? You try to heal _one_ broken orphan boy—

“Or maybe,” Peter says quietly, “Derek has threatened to put me back in the grave if I do anything to scare you again.”

That makes Lydia smile.

“You’ve charmed him,” Peter accuses.

“He needed a friend,” she says. _So did I_ , she thinks. It’s the same reason she’d adopted Allison on the first day of school last year. And Danny before her, and Jackson before that. Most people don’t see it because all her projects are pretty, but her mother has always accused her of picking up strays.

“He needs _pack_ ,” Peter corrects. “You do realize that’s what you’re becoming, don’t you?”

Lydia rubs her eyes, ignoring Peter muttering that she looks like a cranky toddler, and props herself up on one elbow to look at him. “Are _you_? Becoming pack, like you’re supposed to? Because I think he needs you most of all.”

She watches Peter try on a series of expressions, like he’s looking for the one that will most thoroughly disabuse her of that notion, before he settles on discomfort. “If you keep talking like that, you’re going to lose your reputation, princess. You’re just a big teddy bear, aren’t you?”

“Says the werewolf who was too busy cuddling his nephew after a nightmare to answer a booty call,” Lydia mumbles, ignoring the way Peter’s eyes go wide with shock.

He can just deal with it.

Presumably he does, because when she wakes up that afternoon, he’s still there, reclining against her headboard with his legs crossed at the ankles, reading a book he must have stolen from her shelf. Then her eyes adjust to the darkness and she wonders if she’s still dreaming.

He’s deep into the first Twilight book.

“I understand the reference now,” he says, “but this vampire lore is ridiculous.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this to anyone reading along! This chapter was fighting me. Well, it's still fighting me, but I seriously can't look at it anymore, so here we are! Next chapter will be the last, and I can't promise it'll be out any quicker, because I'm stupid busy and endings are the bane of my existence, but it'll definitely get done. Reasonably soon.

The first time Lydia saw the old Hale house, she was traumatized to the point of near-catatonia—though, she supposes that’s an inappropriate exaggeration, in present company. She remembers nothing about the house so much as the lingering smell of smoke and death, the gritty feeling of the dirty floor, and Peter telling her she wasn’t crazy, it was real, at least now she knew she wasn’t crazy. It was not as much of a comfort as he seemed to think it would be, at the time. She’d stared sightlessly ahead, trying not to cry, trying not to scream, trying to just _wake up_.

Now she sits outside on the burned-out husk of the front porch. It’s a gorgeous summer day, the forest around them lush and vibrant and carrying a pleasant breeze. The sky visible through the trees is deep blue and full of wispy, fast-moving clouds. Lydia is sitting shoulder to shoulder with Peter Hale and accepting the bottle of water he offers without a word.

“You’re holding back,” he tells her.

Lydia has been screaming for him all afternoon, just not the way she usually does in her nightmares… and her not-nightmares. A banshee heralds death, she’s learned, but Peter has promised she can do so much more. She’s not sure she believes his promises, but this time, she thinks she’d like to. It would be nice to not feel so helpless. Isn’t that why she sought Derek and Peter out here in the first place, way back at the beginning of summer?

She looks at him now and tries to see him the way she did then—terrifying, terrorizing, imminent, infinite. He was evil incarnate and nothing more.

Somehow in the intervening months, he’s become a whole person… who only seems to be about half-evil, on a good day. He wears tight jeans and shirts unbuttoned too low and sometimes a silver necklace, which she finds ironic, even knowing now that silver doesn’t hurt werewolves. He has blue eyes which, these days, often thaw enough to be called pretty instead of paralyzing. No matter where he sits or stands, he constantly looks like he’s posing, for either vanity or dramatic effect.

Really, he and Jackson are tied for the biggest drama queens Lydia has ever met, just in different ways—Jackson comes by it honestly, through tantrums and a permanent haughty demeanor, where Peter plans it all and revels in the pettiness of it.

It’s all about the little details with Peter, but that means something different these days. He plans how to train her with as much precision as he once planned to traumatize her. His helpful explanations are just as eloquent as his evil speeches. He memorizes their coffee and takeout orders just as well as their weaknesses and fears.

And he’s been waiting for her to respond for quite some time now. She’s not sure how much time, but he’s sitting calmly beside her and not doing anything hallucinatory, so that’s probably not his fault.

“You put too much product in your hair,” she says distractedly. “It always looks so stiff.”

Peter’s surprise is muted. He’s good at rolling with non sequiturs, she notices that every time he talks to Stiles. He simply glances at her and then away again. “Your lip gloss is always too shiny, but I was going to be polite and not say anything.”

“The polite thing _is_ to say something,” she says. “Now that you know you look like an overly groomed doll, you can fix it. While we’re on the subject, those skinny jeans—”

“They’re not skinny, they’re straight leg. And we weren’t on the subject.”

“We should go shopping.” Lydia is distracted again. She shouldn’t have looked at the hem of his jeans. He’s not wearing shoes, his boots are in a pile at the foot of the stairs, and for a moment Lydia is crying in a bathroom stall at school, a man’s dirty feet visible under the door. She breathes, staring until her brain remembers what she’s really looking at.

There’s something sad about it, really, that pile of boots. It reminds Lydia of how she used to have to take her shoes off before walking into her grandmother’s house. It’s like Peter forgot to curb an old habit. She almost forgets, sometimes, that he used to live here too. That it’s not just the house and the dead that burned.

“Lydia?” A warm hand settles slowly on her arm. It’s so warm, she realizes that she’s shivering. She looks up, abruptly back in the summer forest and the present where she belongs. Peter is watching her carefully. “Are you all right?”

She shakes her head before she can stop herself.

“That’s enough for today,” Peter decides. He starts to take his hand off her arm, but instead Lydia turns hers over and twists their fingers together, holding on. She expects him to break her grip, or just break out the claws, but he goes still.

It’s a familiar stillness. She thinks of Jackson with his parents, when one of them would touch him and he pointedly wouldn’t reciprocate, but he wouldn’t move either—like if he just didn’t move, they wouldn’t stop touching him. Lydia holds on tighter. Peter isn’t moving, and his face is entirely blank, but she still feels like she’s learning more about him in this moment than all the rest put together.

She presses her thumb to the center of his palm. It grounds her. His hand is rougher than she would expect, but she supposes that’s what comes from clawing your way out of the grave.

“What were we talking about?” she asks. That’s enough of a confession that today is one of her bad days. Losing time, losing space, losing threads. The bad days are better now, but sometimes she still doubts any of this is real at all. Beside her, Peter is too still. The breeze barely ruffles his hair.

Lydia is unprepared for the grief that wells up inside her at the thought that this Peter might just be another trick. Maybe she’s still losing her mind too. Tears blur her eyes, but she’s glad of it, because it prevents her from looking at anything too closely.

“Peter? Did you answer me?” Her voice is small. It’s embarrassing, but hardly the worst state Peter has seen her in. It’s just that the rest were his fault.

“No, sweetheart, I’m sorry, I…” His eyes are still locked on their joined hands.

Just like that, Lydia can see him clearly. She can breathe again; the summer air tastes like green, like life. Peter’s hand is warm in hers again. The breeze blows her hair around her neck, and it tickles. She relaxes. “This is real.”

Finally, Peter looks up at her. “What gave it away?”

“You always call people sweetheart when you’re being an asshole,” she says. “That could have been part of the… whatever you call it. But you apologized without sounding too slimy, so I figure you’re still tame.”

“Did I?” he asks with mild curiosity, as if he really doesn’t remember. It occurs to her that Peter might have bad days too. “I probably didn’t mean it.”

Lydia is so tired. She rests her head on his shoulder. “That’s fine. I probably don’t forgive you.”

Eventually, Peter nudges her away from him and pulls her to her feet. She feels like she’s half-asleep, but she knows where she is, so that counts for something. She gives him a questioning look, and he says, “Derek’s here.”

Derek is supposed to meet them to make sure Peter is actually helping, and not trying to turn Lydia into a weapon again. If he is trying to weaponize her scream, he’s not doing a very good job of it. Lydia hasn’t so much as shattered a window. “Maybe I’m not holding back. Maybe I just can’t do what you think I can.”

“Huff and puff and blow the whole house down,” he mutters, throwing one last glance at the past before he leads her into the woods.

There’s a joke to be made about which one of them is the big bad wolf, but Lydia can’t think of it. He’s forgotten to let go of her hand. It’s going to piss Derek off, but half the time Peter breathing is enough to piss Derek off. Lydia still doesn’t know what exactly has him so stressed lately—with Lydia as a distraction and Peter doing a calculated dance between bother and balm, he’d gotten past the thing with Gerard weeks ago. She’d believe it was Erica and Boyd, the pain of losing two of his betas, if he weren’t so moody and snappish with the ones he had left. She tries to tell herself it’s none of her business.

They all have bad days.

* * *

It has to be said: her bad days are fewer and farther in between. She’s sleeping more and dreaming less. When the nightmares do come, she has a new, simple solution: call Peter in the middle of the night. Not because he’s so accommodating and comforting, but the opposite. Before, when he was just in her head, she remembers more than anything the slick, smooth sound of his voice. The faux-sympathy. The syrupy manipulation.

When she wakes him up at three in the morning, he groans, sleep-rough, and asks if she’s about to be murdered, and if not, would she like to be? Then he whines about needing his beauty sleep and how, if he knew this was the price he’d have to pay for resurrection, he would have stayed dead.

She’s pretty sure he does it just to make her hang up on him.

* * *

In early August, Derek finally invites her to see where the pack has been living. That’s how she knows Peter was right—Derek is starting to see her as pack, whether he realizes it or not. The building looks industrial, but sometimes that style works, so she’ll reserve judgment. Stiles has told her that Derek’s last home base was an abandoned train depot, so regardless, this will be a step up.

“Do you think we should have brought something?” Stiles asks in the parking lot. “A housewarming gift? A bottle of wine?”

“We’re not old enough to buy wine,” Lydia says, though she thinks some flowers wouldn’t have gone amiss. It’s not like Derek would buy any for himself. “Derek is big on keeping things age-appropriate.”

“Sure,” Stiles mutters. “Am I the only one that feels like we’re walking into the lion’s den?”

Lydia gives him a disappointed look. “Wolf den. It was right there, Stiles.”

“Same difference. I stand by it.” He’s uncowed, which she appreciates. He used to be far too nice to her. He runs a hand through his hair, which is finally long enough to style, though he _hasn’t_ , and looks up at the building.

She shrugs, looking in the same direction. “I’m just wondering if they can hear us from up there. Did we ever find an actual distance recorded?”

“Uh, no, but normal wolves can hear sounds from up to six to ten miles away.” Stiles has a look on his face like he’s mentally rifling through the Hale archives they’re still reading. Lydia has been translating the rest of the Argents’ bestiary too, but she doesn’t want Derek and Peter to know yet. Too much bad blood. As he pushes open the door to the building, Stiles shakes his head. “I don’t know, do you think werewolf hearing would be better or worse than a normal wolf? On the one hand, only half wolf. On the other hand…”

“Supernatural,” Lydia agrees, following him inside and noting with some fascination the new and interesting ways he fills out that awful ringer tee he’s wearing. Maybe she’ll steal him some of Peter’s excessive hair gel while they’re here, kill two birds with one stone.

“Cheesecake,” Stiles says. “We could have brought cheesecake.”

“It’s not a dinner party,” she tells him as they climb the stairs. “I have a feeling he’s going to tell us something awful, actually.”

“A banshee feeling or a Lydia feeling?” he asks, trailing his fingers along the railing in a way that is surprisingly graceful and twisting his neck to look back at her in a way that is decidedly not.

She prods him in the back to make him face forward before he falls and breaks his neck. “A Lydia feeling?”

He nods and waves his free hand. “Yeah, like, genius intuition. You know.”

She’s pleased despite herself. “You don’t have to be a genius to know that something’s wrong. Can’t you feel it?”

“I always feel like something’s wrong. Literally, always. Always gotta assume we’re on the brink of some and new terrible kind of death. Hypervigilance, baby. All the cool kids are doing it.”

“As an actual former cool kid, I promise you they are not. You should see a therapist.”

He shrugs. “If it ain’t broke. Trust me, it’s saved our lives more than once.”

Lydia draws level with him as they stop at Derek’s door and pats his shoulder. He really does need therapy. Probably they all do. She wonders idly what it would take to get Derek to go. Sure, _she’d_ spent the entire time trying to outsmart the process, but her mother swears by it.

Stiles looks like he’s trying to psych himself up for the evening, and she’s not sure what’s making him nervous—the possibility of normal dinner conversation, the possibility that Derek is going to drop bad news on them, or just facing a room full of werewolves without his baseball bat.

The door opens before either of them get around to knocking. Isaac folds his arms and looks unimpressed with both of them. “No Scott?”

“He’s working,” Stiles says automatically. “Also, I’m not sure he was invited?”

“He was,” Derek says, coming up behind Isaac. He nudges his beta aside, and he gives Lydia a nod and what looks like an attempt at a smile. “But I didn’t really think he would come. Stiles. No cheesecake?”

Stiles’s eyes go wide. “Okay. All right. I see how it is. So how far _can_ you hear?”

“I don’t even like cheesecake,” Isaac mutters, going to collapse on the couch. Lydia isn’t sure if he’s pouting or if that’s just what his face looks like. She’s never been able to get a read on him. She can’t tell if he’s a model waiting to be discovered or just an exceptionally pretty nerd.

Derek ignores both of the boys and addresses her. “Peter’s handling dinner, so we’ve got some time. Lydia, want a tour?”

Stiles huffs. “Fine, be like that. I’m going to go ask Peter about your super-hearing. It’s a sad state when the resident supervillain is the only one who will answer my questions, you know.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to call him a _super_ villain,” Lydia says idly. “That’s giving him too much credit, don’t you think? He’s really only pulled off enough schemes to be your average, garden variety villain.”

“You _know_ I can hear you.” Peter appears in a doorway she hadn’t noticed, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. Lydia only glances at him, but then she takes a second look—something is different. He tilts his head, and his hair actually falls in the same direction, and she realizes. Less gel. It’s softer like this, but wavier too. She waits for a moment to see if it will remind her of that night on the lacrosse field, but it’s not nearly so fluffy. He looks much less unhinged.

She presses her lips together—drier than usual because of the downgrade from shiny lipstick to satin. Finally, she looks away. “Derek? How about that tour?”

Derek leads her toward the spiral staircase in the corner as Stiles follows Peter into the kitchen. She doesn’t need to be a werewolf to hear him say, “Oh, shit. When Derek said you were handling dinner I did _not_ think he meant you were _cooking_. Should we be trusting you with knives?”

“I have claws,” Peter reminds him. “Help me with these potatoes.”

“Should we be leaving them alone?” Lydia asks. “I mean, do we trust _Stiles_ with knives? Around Peter? He says he’s not very strong after the resurrection.”

“That’s what he says.” Derek gives her a look that clearly says he’s not sure whether to believe that. “But they’ve actually been getting along. Disturbingly well. Stiles is still going through the books we sent him, and he’s always texting Peter with questions, it’s… disconcerting.”

Lydia laughs. “Are you afraid they’re planning something?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” he says seriously. Then he cocks his head. “Though, really, if Stiles does stab Peter, he’d be doing me a favor.”

She pauses. Their progress has paused too; they’re looking out the big windows at the top of the stairs, and Lydia can appreciate this kind of view, but not right now. “Did he… has he… done something?”

“You mean besides—oh, no. No, I didn’t mean to scare you. He’s… behaving.”

“Then why did you say that?”

Derek looks honestly confused, and Lydia’s resolve not to get involved crumbles just like that. She sighs, knowing Isaac and Peter will be able to hear her, but it’s not as if it needs to be a secret.

“You need to be nicer to him,” she says. Derek looks at her like she’s lost her mind. “Don’t give me that. You two have unresolved issues—treating him like a punching bag when the mood strikes isn’t going to resolve them.”

“What, and _your_ issues are all nice and resolved?” Derek asks.

“ _I_ made him apologize.” Just to test the waters on the mental health train, she adds, “Also, therapy. Lots of therapy. You should try it sometime.”

Derek raises an eyebrow. “Does therapy teach you to be nicer to your psychotic family members?”

“Actually, yes,” Lydia says. From the stories her mother has told, that’s pretty much exactly what therapy does for normal people. “But I don’t mean be nice like _nice_ , I mean… one minute, you act like everything is fine, and the next you talk like he’s nothing. And you have to realize that you’re not just his nephew, you’re his Alpha now, and that kind of thing is going to fuck with a wolf’s head. His head is fucked enough, don’t you think? We don’t need it to get worse.”

Derek is silent for a long time. “Are you… lecturing me on pack dynamics?”

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the subject,” she says. “But mostly I’m just telling you to get your head out of your ass. Seriously, don’t even get me started on what you’re doing with Isaac.”

Derek actually laughs. “Lydia… you’re not wrong.”

“Obviously.”

“But you’re seventeen. You shouldn’t be trying to help me. You shouldn’t have to worry about that.”

Lydia sighs. “That’s what I keep telling people, but I can’t help it if I’m always the smartest person in the room.”

The rest of the tour is much more focused. Predictably, the layout is promising and the décor is horrid. There’s not a personal touch to be found. Everything is dark colors and concrete, and at this point, Lydia would settle for a succulent. Redecorating the pack loft doesn’t count as fixing other people’s problems, right? Not when she’s unofficially part of the pack.

And speaking of unofficial pack members—when they rejoin the other two in the kitchen, Derek pauses. “I suppose you want me to be nicer to Stiles too?”

Stiles looks up from the counter. He’d distracted Peter from cooking with an open book. They’d been standing shoulder-to-shoulder, leaning over it and talking in quiet voices Lydia couldn’t hear but which were probably the makings of those evil plans Derek was worried about earlier. Now Peter moves away without acknowledging them and Stiles says, “What’s that, now?”

Derek looks to Lydia first, who nods.

“Okay,” Derek says to him. “Do you want the bite?”

And _that_ isn’t what Lydia meant about being nice either, but it’s a start. Stiles goes still. “What?”

“Why do you have so much trouble with that question?” Peter asks him. “Honestly.”

“It’s kind of a big fucking deal,” Stiles says. “And I never get any warning! You were just like oh, how good of you to help me with my evil plan, so _by the way_ —”

“This _is_ your warning,” Derek interrupts. “You can think about it, obviously. You were upset I overlooked you—I’m fixing it.”

Stiles makes a face. “Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. For one thing, not that it's any of your business, I don’t think it’s that simple. I’m… not sure it would take.”

“What do you mean?” Peter says with interest.

Stiles throws up a hand and paces the kitchen. “Look, I don’t know anything for sure. But it doesn’t always take, right? And sometimes other supernatural stuff interferes with it, like how Lydia’s immune because she’s a banshee.”

“Yes, we’re all familiar,” Lydia says. “So?”

“So, I think maybe… I might be… a little bit magic.” Stiles looks quickly at each of them and then back at the floor as he paces. “It probably sounds stupid. But ever since I circled a freakin’ building with one tiny little jar of mountain ash, I’ve just had this _feeling_ , like… like I could do more.”

“Oh, that’s excellent,” Peter says unexpectedly. Lydia doesn’t like the hungry look in his eye, and judging by his stormy expression, neither does Derek. Peter raises his hands, the picture of innocence. “I’m only thinking of the good of the pack. Trust me, it’s _always_ helpful to have a magic user around.”

“Trust you,” Derek grumbles. Lydia steps on his foot.

“Hold on, let’s back up a second,” Stiles says. “We’re all just accepting this? I say I might be magic and it’s just, great, let’s start scheming?”

Lydia tries to dredge up some of the requested disbelief, but she just… can’t, anymore. Someone could tell her vampires really do sparkle in the sunlight, and she doesn’t think she’d so much as blink. Peter shrugs. “Pretty much. We’re werewolves, sweetheart, did you expect us to be scandalized?”

Stiles points at him. “You could do with a little scandalizing, okay? You are _way_ too unfazed. By everything. This is why people think you’re a sociopath, Peter!”

“You try burning alive twice, see how much fazes you after that.” Peter shakes his head, fist flexing at his side. Stiles is right that Peter is always calm, always composed; she wonders if this is what it looks like when he’s not. His voice is just a little uneven. “Lose your entire pack, and your body, and your mind, and then _literally die_ , then come tell me what’s worth getting worked up over.”

“You didn’t lose your _entire_ pack,” Lydia says quietly. She’s trying to help. She wants to help, strange as it is. She thinks about touching him again; maybe it would make those strange, restless movements go still.

“Didn’t I?” He doesn’t look at her. With a start, she realizes he’s trying not to scare her. That it’s not just panic making him restless, but rage. She remembers him hurling desks across a classroom to get to her.

She takes a step back as she gives Derek a shove forward. Time for him to be the Alpha.

Before he can do anything, Stiles has a tentative hand on Peter’s shoulder. Just as before, the touch makes Peter freeze. He freezes, but he’s still burning, she thinks. Stiles squeezes once.

“I’ll find you some spell books,” Peter says after a long moment.

“We’re going to need them,” Derek says grimly, and he begins to tell them something awful.

Lydia thought she had her hands full with one dysfunctional Alpha, and now they’ve got to deal with a whole pack of them. At least now she knows what’s wrong with Derek. She exchanges a look with Peter across the kitchen, and she knows they’re both thinking the same thing. Boy wasn’t built for this.

Neither was she. She wonders what the chances are that she’ll be able to stay out of it.

* * *

Summer begins to wind down. Peter and Derek spend more and more time tracking the Alpha pack, because Derek is convinced they have Erica and Boyd. He’s probably right, but he’s also probably going to get himself killed if he does find them, because he’s too full of reckless self-loathing to make sensible decisions. If nothing else, they can count on Peter’s self-preservation instincts to balance him out, but Peter isn’t always with him.

Like when Peter is with Lydia instead, picking out back-to-school dresses and judging her color choices, because Lydia has made a conscious decision to be at least mostly normal again once the haze of summer is over. _Normal_ is where the dresses come in; the wiggle room left by that _mostly_ is why Peter Hale is the one shopping with her.

“I’m not saying you can’t pull off pink.” He runs a critical eye over a skintight mini skirt and selects a pleated option instead, holding it out to her without a word. “I’m just saying that you should wear more blue. With your coloring? It must be stunning.”

“Because apparently all your fashion advice comes from what you learned about complementary colors in high school art class?” She grudgingly takes the navy skirt, because it _is_ nice.

“You’d be surprised,” he says, “what a good complementary pair can do.”

“Is that why you wear nothing but black and gray?” she asks.

Peter looks up from the rack. “Not true. Sometimes, I wear white.”

Lydia laughs, and she pretends not to notice his pleased smile as a result. What they’re doing here is strange enough, they don’t have to start acknowledging it too. She holds a black dress against her. “What about this?”

After a single glance, Peter sighs. “Too short. Lydia, please.”

Lydia opens her mouth to protest, but before she can, a woman nearby shopping with her daughter says, “That’s the fight every year, isn’t it?”

Peter looks surprised, and then delighted. “I try to tell her she doesn’t need to use her body to get attention, but it’s so hard at that age.”

“Oh, but it’s so good you recognize that,” the woman says. Her voice is very nearly simpering, but there’s a calculating look in her eye as she looks Peter up and down. Lydia can practically hear her trying to figure out who he is to Lydia. Father? Older brother? Not a boyfriend, based on his response about the dress. The woman’s daughter looks mortified, but what’s a little mortification for the sake of a handsome, well-dressed man? They’re like unicorns.

Lydia has to give him credit; he at least gives off the illusion of sanity now. She waits for a burst of fear on this woman’s behalf, but she’s only annoyed. She wants to be alone with Peter so she can tell him off for this little stunt.

The woman runs her hand down Peter’s arm before she walks away. To Lydia’s indignation, Peter appears to sway toward her touch, before he grabs the edge of the clothing rack and steadies himself. Before Lydia can think better of it, she’s striding over and pushing him bodily into the aisle. He looks down at her in amusement. “Where are we going?”

“To a different store. I don’t like this one.”

Peter stops. She grabs his hand and tries to drag him along, but he tugs her back and raises the clothes in his other hand. “I need to pay for these first.”

Lydia finally takes a closer look at the shirts he’s holding. One of them is a light pink muscle tee. The other is a slim, dark red button-down. She focuses on that one. “That will definitely not fit you.”

“It’s not for me.”

“Who is Peter Hale shopping for?” Lydia’s not even sure if she should be surprised at this point, but she is, and it seems like he is too. He had been leading her to the register, but now he pauses and looks down at the shirts in his hand. “What is it?”

“I just… I actually didn’t think about it.” He stares down at the shirts in his hands and twitches like he might put them back. He shakes his head. “Talia always used to…”

He shakes his head again and moves as if to push past her, but he still looks a thousand miles away. She stops him with a hand on his chest. “No, really. What’s going on?”

“I did a lot of shopping for the pack before the fire,” he says finally, his voice carefully blank. “My sister would always task me with picking Derek’s nice clothes, because he was a little monster with no taste.”

“So, is that… for Derek?” Lydia is pretty sure there’s no way it would fit Derek either, but she has the awful thought that maybe he’s grabbed the right size from before the fire.

“Of course not. This is for Stiles. Now that he’s finally grown out his hair and stopped obsessing over you, he might actually get a date this year. If he updates his childish wardrobe as well, who among your little classmates could resist?” Peter doesn’t seem to realize exactly how much regard he’s showing for a boy he once kidnapped, but he moves on before she can comment. He holds up the pink tank top, which is plain but for a drawing of a frothy white cupcake, and smiles. “ _This_ is for Derek.”

“I want pictures,” she tells him, deciding to let the rest slide. At least, until she remembers how this started—with strange women flirting with him—and figures they can go over one or two points. She wraps her hand around his arm, like he’s actually a gentleman, and walks with him toward the register. “However, just so we’re clear—I will wear my dresses as short as I like, and you will never again imply that I’m doing it for anyone’s attention.”

“Is that not the point? Draw attention to what’s between your legs so no one notices what’s between your ears?” Peter shrugs. “I’m just saying, that whole charade is a little tired. You don’t have to be the lacrosse captain’s girlfriend anymore, Lydia.”

“If you tell me to just be myself, I’m going to scream,” she says. “Yes, I had an ulterior motive, but I still like the way I dress. You don’t get to act like I’m some insecure teenage girl.”

“Is that how you think I see you?” Peter looks disappointed. “Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

She abruptly lets go of him, turns on her heel, and walks back the way they came. Sometimes she forgets how much she hates him. Because she does. She does hate him. She has to. She goes back for the dress he hadn’t liked. It’s black with a pattern of rich pink roses and with cute flutter sleeves. The loose hem will undoubtedly fall just below her butt.

When she returns, he’s standing right where she left him, typing one-handed on his phone like he doesn’t have a care in the world. She shoves the dress at his chest. “You’re buying me this. And some of the fancy chocolate at the counter.”

He sighs and follows after her as she stalks away. “Fine. As long as you don’t make me apologize again.”

“That _is_ the apology,” she tells him.

“Out of curiosity—are you upset because I let that woman flirt with me? Or because I went along with her assumption about our relationship, and it made you feel like I see you as a child?”

Lydia is pretty sure the look she gives him is suitably murderous. She’s practiced it in the mirror enough times, and it has a tried-and-true quelling effect on most men.

Peter tilts his head. “You’ve made your point. I’ll pay for manicures too.”

* * *

Every time the manicurist reaches for Peter’s hands, he pulls back just slightly before he lets her touch him. It’s not a flinch, but it’s close enough that Lydia can’t quite hold on to her irritation.


End file.
